One aim of this article is to shift mindsets from the traditional identification of written language abilities that are "missing" in students with specific learning disabilities (SLDs) to writing assessment as the discovery of more complex language strengths foundational to success across disciplines. The multiple language-levels (MLL)…

The present study examines the ways Chinese high school EFL learners organize information in their writing. A class of 50 students at grade 9 from a local high school in Guangzhou, China, were recruited as participants. The students' writing at grade 9 was collected as a corpus, comprising ten writing tasks from different text types. In order to…

This study was a yearlong investigation over writing instruction with one class of ninth grade students in an urban, "underperforming" high school. Using qualitative methods with embedded quantitative features, findings revealed students benefited little from the writing instruction they received. In fact, most students showed virtually…

Dysgraphia, a specific learning disability, impairs legible and automatic letter production by hand, which can interfere with written composing. The goal of the current study was not to investigate effective methods for teaching self-regulated writing to students with dysgraphia, but rather to investigate their self that is involved in their…

Dysgraphia, a specific learning disability, impairs legible and automatic letter production by hand, which can interfere with written composing. The goal of the current study was not to investigate effective methods for teaching self-regulated writing to students with dysgraphia, but rather to investigate their self that is involved in their…

In this study, we investigated the effects of choice of writing prompt on the number of story elements included in written narratives. The investigation took place in a residential facility for students with emotional and behavioral disorders. Participants included six female students in a mixed-grade-level course (students had just completed…

A vibrant theory of change capable of fueling critical practice may be an indispensable feature of teaching argument in secondary education. According to the PIE model (Perception, Interpretation, Expression), layers of experience build a cognitive scaffold to support the development of critical skills. In addition, incorporating works of art and…

Around the country, high school teachers are being called upon to improve student writing, but they often lack the tools and requisite know-how to make a difference. An ambitious new program called Drive to Write is attempting to change that. This report describes an evaluation of the program's implementation in 11 public high schools in New York…

Struck by his students' often hostile and apathetic responses to assignments and instruction and hoping to contribute to the knowledge of motivation, Dan LaSalle began to take an inquiry stance on his own practice. He studied his practice on three fronts with the help of an off-site teacher research group: (1) how his inquiry question changes as a…

Structured opportunities for reflective writing allow students to polish their writings and to reflect actively on their written creations, while encouraging clearer and more honest writing products. In addition, the use of reflective writing can transform students as they begin to incorporate metacognition, or thinking about their thinking, into…

In this article, the author shares how she envisioned and created a writing assignment for a ninth-grade English course. The writing project is a class novel comprised of short stories, one written by each student. In the writing assignment, seniors compile their favorite writings from any class in any year of high school and write reflections…

Using multiple baseline designs, we studied the effects of having seven 9th graders edit their papers until a naive reader accomplished a drawing assignment during writer immersion (communication in writing only). During Experiment I, students received no feedback in the first phase, teacher editing feedback in phase 2, and writer immersion plus…

Student teaching in New York City on September 11, 2001, forced the author to scrap her carefully planned lessons. Instead, she designed a unit to address the urgent needs of the ninth graders in her care. In this article, the author describes the poetry unit she designed to help students deal with the grieving process and allow them a way to talk…